.png)
by Kearin Green
This article was originally published by Pugwash Magazine on 23 May 2022.
Vincent Pericard has an impressive amount of credentials behind his name. He’s a UOP alumni, an ex-football player, works in company success management and has a passion for personal development coaching. He has a sense of kindness and patience when I speak to him. He’s also the co-founder of the Whatsup app; something he made so students could get more mental health support than he was able to access when he developed depression.
The U.K. is currently experiencing a mental health epidemic due to the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the traumatic lockdowns that suffocated the country as a result. For university students, studying during COVID has been a nightmare. As a result, student mental health has deteriorated at a high rate. However, COVID is not completely to blame for this mental health crisis as a whole. It has always been a problem. It didn’t just come out of the blue. The tragedy of Natasha Abrahart of University of Bristol, who took her own life in 2018 due to the university’s inability to accommodate her mental health difficulties is a pivotal example of how much mental health matters.
For this reason, Vincent believes younger generations are being bereaved by loneliness and are still “suffering in silence and not able to receive support”. When he was at his worse during his pro-football career, Vincent felt extremely isolated. “I had depression at the time and was very afraid to talk about it. I was afraid of the criticism I would get if I spoke about what I was experiencing. I wanted to be able to just pick up the phone and talk to someone and tell them I’m not okay. I just wanted to be able to be honest – and not be judged for saying that”.
As combat towards the demons he encountered, he developed the concept of an app exclusively for Portsmouth students which would soon become the real deal: the Whatsup-App. The app is a digital platform, as Pericard describes it, that provides students with mental health support directly via text messaging to and from Student Wellbeing Services – and is completely confidential. The app also offers a mood tracker, personal journal, and inspirational quotes that requires you to minimise your cynicism and actually read the best quote to ever form in someone’s brain since ‘live, love, laugh’ rocked your mum’s world in 2012. It also has access to contacts in times of crisis-and Vincent already has more planned. He wants to be able to link the app soon enough to community support and the feature to allow students to create their own support groups within the app.
The app has been a success for students for almost a decade now. The wellbeing service continues to display it with pride and use it continuously whilst students are urged to keep it on their phones as if it’s the family tracker your mum made you install after seeing photos of you on a night out and realised how stupid you are (please tell me I’m not the only one). In all seriousness, perhaps it’s treated this way because it is.
Perhaps it really is a lifeline. It’s clear how much it has connected students with help when they don’t know who to turn to, don’t know how to talk to their loved ones about what they’re going through, or access crisis support-and Vincent knows how much it has done for the students.
“I made something I’m extremely proud of. I’m just happy to know that I was able to change people’s lives in their darkest moments. I would like the app to be available to students all over the U.K. That’s my next goal.”
Based on what I’ve learnt about Vincent in this interview, I have good faith that if that’s his next goal, he will make it happen.
Comentarios